I'm a 23 year old grad student at UMKC working on a Masters Degree in Music and getting certified to teach K-12 music. I love reading, watching anything HBO or anything written/produced by Alan Ball, playing piano, and spending time with my friends.

I find that the more I study music the more I realize my passions for art, psychology, literature, sociology, film, medicine, and so many other fields. I get really caught up with the little pleasures in life like good food, interesting music, clouds, the minds of children, etc. Sometimes I feel like a 7 year old just because I'm so excited by what I'm supposed to be used to by now. But, I don't mind.

Cooking without clear visions of what I'm making. I mean, I can make things from recipes but I love to just have ingredients and figure out as I go what exactly is going to happen.

I'm not sure I can accurately comment on this, but I hope they notice my smile. Maybe they also notice that I'm blond? A lot of my friends comment on the fact that I'm their tall blond friend and I'm not completely sure if I like that that's how they remember me.

Books: The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon, A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis, and A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, among others.

Movies: Babette's Feast, American Beauty, the Iron Giant, A Beautiful Mind, the Hours, Little Miss Sunshine, the Shawshank Redemption, Psycho, Finding Neverland, Mean Girls, the Pianist, Rear Window, Babel, Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Music: Björk, The Polyphonic Spree, Rufus Wainwright, Joni Mitchell, Nickel Creek, Fiona Apple, Ben Folds, Over the Rhine, Patty Griffin, Regina Spektor, Jamie Cullum, and of course a wealth of classical music.

Literature, music, art, caffeinated beverages, friends, variety.

I honestly spend a lot of time thinking about thinking. I know that sounds weird, but metacognition is just completely fascinating. I like to understand why people do what they do and what experiences happened to make the person who they are. I suppose this explains why I love psychology and sociology so much.